blackbirding
blackbirding noun: the practice of kidnapping Pacific Islanders, or kanakas, for sale as cheap labour. Also the present participle and gerund of blackbird.
Noun
blackbirding (uncountable)
- The practice of kidnapping Pacific Islanders, or kanakas, for sale as cheap labour.
- Burns Philp was to incur public odium in the most notorious case in Queensland concerning blackbirding.1995, John Gunn, Taking Risks, QBE 1886-1994: A History of the QBE Insurance Group, page 9
- Douglas Oliver, in Black Islanders, tells the story of a blackbirding party which, in 1871, captured a group of eighty-five unsuspecting Bougainvilleans who had taken their twenty-man canoes to the blackbirding ship out of curiosity or a desire to trade.2004, Lawrence McCane, Marist Brothers, Melanesian stories: Marist Brothers in Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea 1845–2003, page 120
Also used as
blackbirding is also the present participle and gerund of blackbird.
Origin of blackbirding
From blackbird + -ing, perhaps from the putative slang blackbird (“indigenous Pacific islander”).
Questions about blackbirding
- What does blackbirding mean?
- Blackbirding means the practice of kidnapping Pacific Islanders, or kanakas, for sale as cheap labour.
- What part of speech is blackbirding?
- Blackbirding is a noun.
Words near blackbirding in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: blackbirding (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: EN-AU ck1 blackbirding.ogg.
Cite this entry: “blackbirding.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/blackbirding. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.